Riley Keough, 34, and husband Ben Smith-Petersen, 32, welcomed Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen via surrogate in August 2022, the actress revealed in a new Vanity Fair cover story. This comes nearly 7 months after Ben and Riley announced at Lisa Marie Presley’s funeral — via a letter Riley had written — that they had welcomed a daughter.
Her daughter’s first name is an unintentional tribute to her grandfather, Elvis Presley. The King of Rock and Roll was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. “It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” Riley said. “I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family—it’s not like Memphis or something. Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.”
Riley honors her late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, with Tupelo’s middle name, Storm. Benjamin died by suicide in July 2020 at the age of 27.
When speaking of her daughter, Riley gushed that Tupelo is “literally like someone shrunk my husband and that’s our baby.” While Tupelo may look just like her father, Riley pointed out that her daughter’s curls come from her.
Just months after welcoming her daughter, Riley suffered the devastating loss of her mother, Lisa Marie, on January 12, 2023. Lisa Marie, Elvis’ only child, died at the age of 54 from a small bowel obstruction.
In the midst of her grief, Riley is determined to move forward and be the best mother she can be for Tupelo. “This is the thing in my life so far that I have really wanted to, quote-unquote, get right,” Riley said of motherhood. “I don’t think you ever can be a perfect parent, but I would like to be the best mom for her that I can be. That’s… very important to me.”
The Daisy Jones & The Six star also confirmed for the first time that she and her husband used a surrogate to have their daughter. “I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff,” Riley told Vanity Fair. The Emmy nominee suffers from Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection.
